Pages

Monday, January 16, 2012

2012: Is it the year of the fairy tale?

Shhhhh... I am working on writing up an article. Honest I am. I am not distracting myself by figuring out whether I can make a trip along the Italian Riveria during the weekend off from teaching in Prato. I am not distracting myself with Golden Globe fashions. No siree.

However, I am wondering if this year is the year of fairy tale. Those of us in Australia have started seeing the channel 7 promotional spots for Once Upon A Time, which is excellent news. Grimm went to cable and I don't have cable.

There are fairy tale films due out soon, including Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman, and Jack and the Beanstalk.

There is a lot of buzz about a cyborg version of Cinderella in Marissa Meyer's Cinder. You can see the prequel short story here on Tor.com.

The trouble with what appears to be a resurgence of fairy tale is that people will expect the trend to end. Admittedly, we still haven't seen the end of vampires and Harry Potter doesn't seem to be melting away into obscurity (although, SNL has an especially funny take on his adult years), and I'd be thrilled if fairy tale keeps getting 'bigger' as the twenty-first century progresses. What I would like to see, though, are new tales and less popular tales emerge from this trend. It's incredible how limited the canon of fairy tale really is. It is time to expand that canon and introduce new generations to Viola, Finette, the Ram and their like.

No comments:

Twitter

About Me

Dr Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario researches and teaches fairy tale, children's and fantasy literature at Monash University. This blog is an off-campus outlet for thinking about these stories and their tellers.
And now the Blog's Song (because having a good theme song is important).
To quote Dumbledore, "everyone pick their favourite tune":
If there's somethin' strange/ in your literature/
Who you gonna call?/
Doc-in-Boots/
If it's somethin' weird/
an' it don't read right/
Who you gonna call?/
Doc-in-Boots/
I ain't afraid of no tale (with thanks to the Ghostbusters theme song)